WOMEN'S HISTORY MOMENT: REMEMBERING SARAH E. GOODE, INVENTOR OF THE FOLD-A-WAY BED (3397 hits)
Sarah E. Goode (born Sarah E. Jacob) was born into slavery in about 1850.
She gained her freedom at the end of the Civil War and moved to Chicago shortly after. In Chicago she met and married Archibald Goode, a carpenter.
The idea of being married to a carpenter and starting a furniture store must have seemed natural, there would have been nothing natural about a woman, a former slave, running the shop. Despite this, Sarah built a thriving and well-known business. In working with her customers, she heard their needs and that led to her invention: a cabinet bed or a fold-a-way bed.
Her customers lived in small apartments and needed to maximize their space. Sarah worked out a design for a bed that could be used for sleeping during the night but converted into a rolltop desk during the day. The bed, complete with mattress and spring support, was attached by hinges and could be raised or lowered as needed. Because it was a rolltop it also provided storage.
On July 14, 1885, Sarah E. Goode, became the first African-American woman to be granted a patent by the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office (Patent #322,17), for her invention, the cabinet bed. Today we have the Murphy bed and the hide-away bed/couch as a result.
Wow! I have a fold-away bed which I'm not using, but at least I know it was an invention which was generated of a woman and one which was Black. Good research.
Saturday, March 31st 2012 at 9:02AM
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